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Hennepin County

Hennepin County Licenses & Certificates

In short

Hennepin County Licenses & Certificates issues 8 permits we publish for Hennepin County, last verified 2026-09-28. Each carries the fee as the agency publishes it, with a link to the schedule it was read from.

What this agency issues

Permits required, with issuing agency, fee, renewal term and the date each record was last verified against its source
General Business License — Hennepin County Positiononly if it applies to youHennepin County Licenses & CertificatesNo feenot applicable — the county's business licenses and certificates page lists no general business license2026-09-28
Liquor License — City Issues; County Role Limited to Fort Snelling (Hennepin County)only if it applies to youHennepin County Licenses & CertificatesNo feenot applicable outside the Fort Snelling unorganized territory2026-09-28
Transient Merchant Licenseonly if it applies to youHennepin County Licenses & Certificates$150 per location, stated directly on the county's own license page — 'the license is good for only the location on the application'not stated on the county's license page; one license covers only the single location applied for2026-09-28
Animal Control, Kennels and Veterinary Licensing — City and State Roles (Hennepin County)only if it applies to youHennepin County Licenses & CertificatesNo feenot applicable2026-09-28
Building Permit / Zoning Approval — City Issues (Hennepin County)only if it applies to youHennepin County Licenses & CertificatesNo feenot applicable — the county's ordinance index lists no building or zoning ordinance; each city issues building permits and zoning approvals2026-09-28
Precious Metal Dealer Licenseonly if it applies to youHennepin County Licenses & Certificates$50 per license, stated directly on the county's own license pagenot stated on the county's license page2026-09-28
Contractor Licensing — Minnesota DLI and Cities (Hennepin County)only if it applies to youHennepin County Licenses & CertificatesNo feenot applicable2026-09-28
Salon / Cosmetology Licensing — Minnesota Board of Cosmetologist Examiners (Hennepin County)only if it applies to youHennepin County Licenses & CertificatesNo feenot applicable2026-09-28

Fees shown as a range or formula are set that way by the issuing agency — we do not average them into a single number.

About each permit

General Business License — Hennepin County Position

No fee applies. Hennepin County's 'Business' licenses and certificates page enumerates the county's business licenses, and that list names no catch-all general license: Auctioneer's License, Body Art License, Cannabis License, Estate Sale Conductor, Family Child Care License, Food/Pools/Lodging Licenses, Gambling Permit, Hazardous Waste Licensing, Liquor License, Notary Certificate, Notary Commission, Notary Services, Precious Metal Dealer License, Retail Tobacco License, Solid Waste Haulers, Swimming Pool License and Transient Merchant License. Each item on that list that reaches one of the ten industries this site tracks is listed separately for this jurisdiction, along with related records for building/zoning, contractor licensing, animal control, salon/cosmetology, liquor and well permitting. A business operating in Minneapolis or any other Hennepin County city should also check that CITY's own business-license requirements, which this county-level listing does not cover.

Liquor License — City Issues; County Role Limited to Fort Snelling (Hennepin County)

No fee applies to a Hennepin County liquor license for a business sited in an actual incorporated city — which is essentially every real business address in the county, since Hennepin is almost entirely incorporated. Minnesota liquor licensing (on-sale and off-sale) is fundamentally a MUNICIPAL function under Minn. Stat. Ch. 340A; a restaurant, coffee shop, food truck or retail-store selling alcohol gets its license from its own CITY, not from Hennepin County. The county board's own liquor authority under §340A.404, subd. 6 is narrow by statute: it may issue annual on-sale licenses to bowling centers, restaurants, clubs, hotels and resorts, plus up to ten seasonal licenses, but only in the 'unorganized or unincorporated' area of the county — in practice, essentially only the tiny Fort Snelling unorganized territory (population 322). Separately, Minn. Stat. §383B.562 lets the county issue one-day on-sale licenses to nonprofits at its own Government Center — an internal-events provision, not a business license program, and not a path around a city's own liquor license.

Transient Merchant License

Hennepin County's own page frames this license around 'out-of-state businesses having a sale in Hennepin County' — a temporary or pop-up seller rather than a fixed local retail-store, though a retail-store hosting a visiting pop-up vendor could need it too. The fee is $150, good only for the specific location named on the application, so a multi-location temporary sale needs a separate license per site. Minn. Stat. §329.15 states directly that a city's own transient-merchant regulation is 'in addition' to the county/state license structure ('the requirements of sections 329.10 to 329.17 shall be in addition thereto'), not a replacement for it — the same reasoned structural conclusion as the precious metal dealer license above: this license likely stacks with a city's own transient-merchant or peddler ordinance rather than being pre-empted by one, wherever a city has adopted such an ordinance.

Animal Control, Kennels and Veterinary Licensing — City and State Roles (Hennepin County)

No fee applies. Hennepin County's own enumerated business-license list names no animal-control, kennel or veterinary-specific license. Animal control, impoundment and pet licensing are municipal functions instead: Minneapolis Animal Care & Control runs the city's own program under its own ordinance, and other Hennepin County cities handle it through their police departments or contracted services, each with its own local rules and fees that vary city to city. Individual veterinarian and veterinary-hospital licensure runs through the Minnesota Board of Veterinary Medicine at the state level, and kennel licensing, where it applies, runs through the Minnesota Board of Animal Health. A veterinary clinic's one plausible county-level touchpoint is the Hazardous Waste Generator License (Part D), if it generates qualifying waste above threshold quantities.

Building Permit / Zoning Approval — City Issues (Hennepin County)

No fee applies. Hennepin County's own ordinance index lists no building code and no zoning ordinance, and building permits for the ten industries come from the cities. The index's five ordinance categories are Health; Law enforcement; Licenses, property, and roads; Solid waste; and Special taxes — no building or zoning category exists anywhere in it, and the 'Licenses, property, and roads' category contains only condominium plat approval, a criminal-penalty procedures ordinance, and the County Right-of-Way Use Ordinance (recorded separately for contractors). Zoning authority under Minnesota law applies to a county only in unorganized or unincorporated territory, which for Hennepin County means essentially only Fort Snelling; every city — Minneapolis, Bloomington, Plymouth, Minnetonka, Edina, St. Louis Park, Eden Prairie and the rest — issues its own building permits and runs its own zoning code for any of the ten industries sited there.

Precious Metal Dealer License

A retail-store subtype dealing in pawn, coin or secondhand jewelry — a pawn shop, coin dealer or some jewelry stores — needs this $50 county license. Minn. Stat. §325F.733 requires the application to be filed with the auditor of the county where the dealer does business, a structure that runs through the county government directly rather than through an MDH-style delegation agreement a city could substitute for. Unlike the food, pool, body-art and tobacco licenses above, no source found states that Minneapolis or any other Hennepin County city carves itself out of this license the way it does for those programs, and the county-auditor filing structure gives no mechanism for a city to opt out even if it wanted to. The reasoned conclusion is that this license likely stacks with, rather than substitutes for, a Minneapolis business's own city precious-metal or pawnbroker license, rather than being pre-empted by one — a Minneapolis dealer should expect to hold both.

Contractor Licensing — Minnesota DLI and Cities (Hennepin County)

No fee applies. Hennepin County's own enumerated business-license list names no contractor license or registration, and no ordinance category in the county's five-category ordinance index addresses contractor regulation. Minnesota regulates contractors on two layers instead: the state, through the Department of Labor & Industry's Construction Contractor Registration and residential building contractor license under Minn. Stat. Ch. 326B, and the municipal layer, where individual cities may add their own local registration on top of the state one. Neither layer runs through Hennepin County government. The one county-level permit a contractor might actually need is the narrow, project-specific County Right-of-Way Use Permit, recorded separately, for work disturbing a county road right-of-way.

Salon / Cosmetology Licensing — Minnesota Board of Cosmetologist Examiners (Hennepin County)

No fee applies at the county level. Cosmetology, esthetics, nail and salon-shop licensing in Minnesota is administered exclusively by the state Board of Cosmetologist Examiners under Minn. Stat. Ch. 155A — no cosmetology or salon license of any kind appears anywhere in Hennepin County's own five-category ordinance index or its enumerated business-license list, and both are authoritative, county-published sources for what the county does and does not license. A salon's two plausible points of county-level exposure are conditional, not automatic: the Body Art Establishment License (Part E), if the salon offers tattooing, piercing beyond a single-use stud-and-clasp system, or permanent makeup; and the Hazardous Waste Generator License (Part D), if the salon's chemical use or disposal crosses a threshold quantity. A hair or nail salon without either service is outside both of those county licenses.

Contact

Jurisdiction
Hennepin County
Phone
Not verified — use the website

Contact details are taken from the agency’s own site or its published fee schedule. Where we have not verified a phone number we leave it blank rather than guess.

Sources

Every fee and term above was read from one of these government pages on the date shown.

  1. Business licenses and certificates (master index of every county-issued business license)Hennepin County · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  2. Licenses, property, and roads ordinances (category index)Hennepin County · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  3. Minn. Stat. §325F.733 — precious metal dealer license application filed with the auditor of the county in which the dealer does businessMinnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  4. Minn. Stat. §329.15 — municipal transient-merchant regulation is 'in addition' to county/state licensing, not a substitute for itMinnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  5. Minn. Stat. §340A.404, subd. 6 — county board liquor-licensing authority limited to the unorganized/unincorporated areaMinnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  6. Minn. Stat. §383B.562 — one-day on-sale liquor licenses the county may issue to nonprofits at its own Government CenterMinnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  7. Minn. Stat. Ch. 329, Transient MerchantsMinnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  8. Minneapolis Animal Care & Control — confirms animal control is a municipal, not a county, functionCity of Minneapolis · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  9. Ordinances (five-category master index: Health; Law enforcement; Licenses, property, and roads; Solid waste; Special taxes — no building/zoning category)Hennepin County · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  10. Precious metal dealer license — $50 fee, filed with the countyHennepin County · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29
  11. Transient merchant license — $150 fee, for out-of-state businesses having a sale in Hennepin County, good only for the location on the applicationHennepin County · primary source · retrieved 2026-09-29

Other offices serving Hennepin County

The full permit list for this jurisdiction

Industry permit lists that include this agency

Minnesota jurisdictions

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